


Best Served Cold

by nateheywood



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Crack, Crew as Family, Cute, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Married Couple, Rip is not in this whatsoever im sorry dude, Romance, Stein and Jax aren't really mentioned but they're there, THE LEGENDS ARE A FAMILY, Team as Family, i'll acknowledge that this is a little cracky, len can't cook and mick never fails to laugh at him for it, neither can sara, oh! len and mick are married so jot that down, ray tries to defend him but, rip is referred to by gideon im tagging them both, there is nothing to defend, they're there, wait, you guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 18:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16310741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nateheywood/pseuds/nateheywood
Summary: Here’s the thing: Len cannot cook for shit. Like, help-I-put-tin-foil-in-the-microwave-and-now-it’s-on-fire-also-all-my-friends-have-salmonella can’t cook.But he can't back down now, not after Sara has unofficially challenged him.Or, in which Len majorly fucks up his turn at cooking the team dinner.





	Best Served Cold

**Author's Note:**

> guys, i literally started watching this show four days ago and am halfway through season 2 (fuck you rachel, look at what you've done to me). Also, you can pry Len out of my cold, dead hands.

They’re eleven months into the mission when Len is found out for his crimes against the team.

They’re sitting around the table after dinner, trying to figure out which meal was everyone’s personal best. They’ve made it through Ray’s surprisingly good vegan nonsense, Sara’s salmon and lemon, and Kendra’s just-remembered Egyptian Koshari when Sara’s gaze zeroes in on him. He tries his best not to freeze in place.

He watches as Sara works it out in her head, going from expecting him to brag about his own dish, to going through the dishes he's made, to wondering why she _can’t_ , and, finally, realizing that he has made approximately zero meals for the team.

“ _Snart._ ”

He isn’t even surprised that she’s regressed from “Len” to “Snart” in the millisecond that she figured it out. What he _is_ surprised at is how long it’s taken her to realize that he’s been skating by meal duty for nearly a full year without any of them noticing.

(It’s because he’s been doing the dishes nearly every night. They’ve all been too preoccupied with avoiding the chore to pay any attention to what chores _he’s_ been avoiding when he’s the one saving them from The Dishes more often than not.) 

“Yes?” he drawls, careful not to shift from where’s he’s draped across his chair, back against the arm and feet kicked up on Mick’s lap. 

Sara raises her eyebrows. “You haven’t cooked for us yet,” she says bluntly.

The entire team gapes at him, and Mick pats his shin in a sardonic form of comfort. 

“It’s been a year?” Ray squawks, staring at Len like he’d just confessed to being a double agent for Savage.

“I can’t believe--”

“You had the _nerve--”_

“So you’ve just been--” 

They’re all talking over each other, betrayed and angry, and Len sits and takes it for about thirty seconds before he’s yelling, throwing out his one defense in a desperate effort to save himself.

“I do the dishes EVERY NIGHT!” he shouts, and everyone shuts up at once. Ray even looks a little sheepish. 

They sit in silence for another thirty seconds, the only sounds coming from Mick, who is the only one still eating, before Sara speaks again.

“Okay, fine. So you’ve served your penance.” She leans across the table, maintaining eye contact with Len. It’s a little intimidating. “But you’re still cooking tomorrow night.”

Len wants to protest, he really does, but he can’t back down now.

“Fine,” he drawls, swinging his legs off of Mick and standing up fluidly. “But you’re doing the dishes." 

-

Len’s initial solution is to have Mick in the kitchen with him to “keep him company as he cooks”, when actually Mick will cook while Len sits on the counter and watches him, because Mick has a gift.

(Mick made risotto once, and Len is still pretty sure Ray actually orgasmed)

Mick agrees, begrudgingly, after some pushing from Len and ultimately the promise of a blowjob after dinner, and Len’s coasting on that sweet high of relief until Sara crushes his dreams.

“Mick isn’t allowed in the kitchen,” Sara says from the doorway.

Len stares at her, and can only assume that Mick is doing the same. She rolls her eyes.

“Come _on,_ we _all_ know Mick is a genius in the kitchen, Snart. You’re not cheating, at least not with Mick.”

Mick just leaves the kitchen with a quick pat on Len’s ass, Sara leaning against the doorway smugly. Len scowls.

-

Mick is worried. No, scratch that, he’s _terrified._

Here’s the thing: Len cannot cook for _shit._ Like, help-I-put-tin-foil-in-the-microwave-and-now-it’s-on-fire-also-all-my-friends-have-salmonella can’t cook.

To paint the picture, Len has:

  1. Put half a cup of salt in the cookies he was making for a movie night he, Lisa, and Mick had put together. Claimed he misread half a teaspoon as half a cup. Mick still hasn’t let it go - he’s pretty sure the salt damaged his tongue.
  2. Sprinkled salt on a hot frying pan, because that was apparently how he’d thought you prepped the surface. “You use _butter,_ ” Mick had growled as they attempted to control the incredible amount of smoke it had caused. Len had just rolled his eyes. The entire apartment complex had ended up having to go outside anyways, and Mick was the one who made Lisa’s grilled cheeses from then on out.
  3. One time, Mick came home to the cutting board melted into the stovetop. He didn’t ask for an explanation, and Len didn’t give any.
  4. Len puts ketchup on his mac and cheese. This isn’t necessarily a disaster, but it's disgusting and proves Len’s ineptitude as well.



Len refuses to tell the others that he’s bad at cooking, because God forbid anyone know that Len is _bad_ at something, and has forbidden Mick to tell them either.

Mick really should tell them, because he’s tasted Len’s food, he’s made the same mistake Sara's currently making - forcing Len to share the workload of meal-making - and he still has nightmares about it. But, he made a promise to Len, and he wasn’t about to break a promise over something so childish. 

Besides, it’ll be fun, watching the horror on everyone’s faces as Len presents his unholy creation.

He’s already smiling.

-

Len’s ultimate solution is to make the simplest meal in the world: boxed mac-and-cheese and frozen chicken nuggets. It isn’t his ideal meal, but making everyone instant ramen probably won’t fly and the others won’t let Mick into the kitchen with him.

He keeps telling himself that he couldn’t possibly fuck up something that has the instructions written on the package.

He presses his lips together and looks at the package of chicken nuggets, thinking. He’s read the instructions for both items a few times, and he’s fairly confident in himself. After a moment, he pulls out a cookie sheet from one of the hidden cupboards and starts pouring the frozen nuggets onto it, smoothing them over with his hand.

Wait.

He hasn’t washed his hands. He takes a five minute break to wash his hands and steal some of Mick’s M&Ms from where he was watching TV in the lounge. He returns to the chicken nuggets and puts them in the oven.

This wasn’t so bad.

He fills a pot with what he thinks is enough water and sets it to boil. Once the water is boiling, he pours in the mac and cheese and sets a timer for the instructed 7 minutes.

He goes to check on the nuggets, and realizes he never turned the oven on. He sets it for 250° instead of 350°, because he’s afraid of burning the nuggets (he’s managed to before). He sets the timer for about 10 minutes longer than instructed, because losing 100° translates to adding 10 minutes as far as he’s concerned.

The mac and cheese is done boiling, so he switches off the flame and pours the cheese powder in. As he watches the water bloom orange, he realizes he was supposed to drain the excess water.

This is when he starts panicking.

Okay! Okay. This is fine. It’s fine.

He frantically dumps the milk and butter in and begins stirring violently, hoping against all hope that the noodles will miraculously absorb the excess water. It doesn’t work, but Len doesn’t even have time to be disappointed, because _all of the noodles are stuck to the bottom._

They’re all glued to the bottom of the pot in some sort of clump, and when scraping at it doesn’t work, he starts hacking with the wooden spoon. He manages to break it apart somewhat, but they’re still floating around in the water in smaller clumps that he can’t break apart unless he uses his fingers. He lets it be, and pretends that the clumps aren’t also burnt at the bottoms.

The nuggets are fine, thank God. He remembers to wear oven mitts when he takes them out (the last time was… rough, but Mick had been really into the burns, so Len hadn’t cared very much), and sets the tray on the cherry patterned hot plate that Ray had procured from somewhere.

He sets the mac and cheese pot next to the tray on another hot plate and surveys his meal.

 It might be the best he’s done yet, but that isn’t saying much - the mac and cheese is a wreck that he doesn't have time to remake, because Ray and Kendra are setting the table and the others are taking their seats, but maybe the chicken nuggets will be fine. They aren't burnt, so there’s that.

He keeps himself from screaming in frustration, but just _barely -_ he still screams a little with his lips pressed together.

He stands there for another five minutes, listening to the others’ conversation in the dining room, before Sara calls out, “Where’s our food, Snart?”

“Patience is a virtue, Lance,” he calls back, before staring at his mac and cheese soup for a little longer.

He breathes out through his nose, shutting his eyes. Okay.

He brings out his meal and sets it in the center of the table, making sure the tongs and the ladle (the _ladle,_ God, he’s fucked this up so _bad_ ) don’t fall off. Mick looks at the mac and cheese and his eyebrows reach what would be his hairline. He looks like he’s trying really hard not to laugh.

Len has never wanted to punch him more.

“Oh,” Ray says, a little smile on his face as he looks at Len. “Is that some sort of soup? Pumpkin, maybe?”

Everyone looks at Len. He silently sits down next to Mick, who is shaking with barely restrained mirth, and he stares Ray, who looks a little afraid.

“No,” he says finally, careful to keep his voice steady and drawling. “It’s mac and cheese."

Now everyone's eyebrows are up to their hairlines. Sara's are nearly disappearing. 

Mick is wheezing.

It’s silent for a few more seconds before Ray says, “Oh….”, and Sara gets up, walks into the kitchen, and returns with a stack of bowls and spoons. She is silent as she passes them all out, a tiny smirk on her face, which is worse than any kind of a comment she could have made.

Len glares.

Everyone is silent and wary as they serve themselves a ladleful of macaroni soup, taking more nuggets in order to compensate for the bare minimum of macaroni they had all taken.

Len serves himself some as well, with all of the bravery of a knight going into battle.

The macaroni tastes like absolutely nothing. Despite the opaque orange of the water, it doesn’t taste cheesy, and the milk and butter had done nothing to thicken it into any sort of texture. When he samples the noodles, they only taste burnt.

He hasn’t even tried the chicken nuggets when Mick suddenly bursts into laughter, breaking the heavy silence that had befallen the table.

“These are frozen in the middle,” Mick wheezes out, waving a chicken nugget in the air. It has a bite mark in it, but not all the way through, probably because--

“I couldn’t even bite all the way through it!” Mick is howling, and Len can’t believe he promised a blowjob to this man just three hours earlier.

Soon, everyone is laughing (except Len), and Sara still manages to get her own little dig in. “This is so _bad,_ ” she says through her tears, and it isn’t her cleverest insult, but it still does the job. 

Only Ray is still slurping the tasteless orange soup, trying his best to come for Len’s defense. “Hey! It’s only his first team dinner!" But he’s smiling, and the team just breaks out into more laughter. 

Len is very close to just leaving the table when they all wind down, and they all just smile at him fondly, making him bristle and open his mouth to snap at all of them, when Gideon interrupts:

“Captain Hunter asks if you all would like to have pizza rather than Mr. Snart’s meal?”

Mick is the first to start laughing again.

They end up time jumping to 1993 Chicago and crowding into a booth at Uno’s, splitting four pizzas between all of them.

They haven’t stopped teasing Len, but he can’t bring himself to sulk about it anymore, especially when the conversation turns suddenly on poor Jax about halfway through, after he lets it slip that he was the one who ate the last frozen waffle.

“ _Guys,_ we can get _more,_ ” Jax whines, interrupting Ray’s rant about how he was deprived of the most important meal of the day for the past two mornings. 

Len smirks and runs through some little jabs he could throw at the kid, enjoying the warmth of Mick beside him and the laughter of his teammates. He feels a strange sense of belonging, and he tries not to feel afraid of it. Maybe this could be good for him, for Mick.

Speaking of, Mick hasn’t received a team roast, yet. Luckily, Len knows that they’re watching _It_ as one of their team bonding exercises in a few days. The day the team witnesses Mick put on the weakest brave face at a bad horror movie is the day Len will know true happiness.

Teasing Mick about Pennywise will last at least as long as his fucked up mac and cheese remains popular dinner conversation, as far as he’s concerned.

**Author's Note:**

> The "It" referenced is the original "It" from 1990, and it's mostly cheesy, so Mick doesn't even have the horrifying nature of the painted lady from It (2017) to back him up. Hope you enjoyed!!
> 
> Acknowledgements:
> 
> To Rachel, who hath cursed me with DC's Legends of Tomorrow, without you, this fic would have never been birthed
> 
> And to anonymous lot friend of rachel's, who hath blessed me with the beautiful pun of "best served cold" for the title
> 
> EDIT: follow her ^ at @bold-sartorial-statement on tumblr!!


End file.
